


Despite the Warning Signs

by novelogical (writingmonsters)



Category: Burnt (2015)
Genre: Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Love Confessions, M/M, Past Drug Addiction, Requited Unrequited Love, Smoking, Sort of? - Freeform, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 22:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20646365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingmonsters/pseuds/novelogical
Summary: In spite of himself Adam asks “when did you start smoking?”Why?A little shiver of fear seizes in Tony’s chest and he shrugs, looking everywhere but at Adam. It isn’t the cigarette smoke that tightens his lungs, smothering any attempt at a confession. “Is just a habit.”The kind of habit that had started almost as an accident. A small, thoughtless thing when they had cleaned out the contents of Adam’s locker at the restaurant, slipping the crumpled, half-empty red carton into his own pocket.





	Despite the Warning Signs

**Author's Note:**

> Smoking is an awful habit and addiction is a serious matter -- that being said, there's feels to be had.
> 
> For Jake, as always. <3

Adam is half sure he imagines it at first -- drifts of cigarette smoke, the lingering weight of tobacco on the air, a nicotine-high that haunts him like a ghost.

He tells himself he doesn’t miss the addiction, and it’s mostly true. The routine of cigarette breaks, of lighting up and breathing slow and deep around the first hit of nicotine, is what he really misses. Familiar motions that had been a comfort. Meditative, almost.

The haphazard collage of patches pasted on his upper arms and packs of nicotine gum can only help so much.

Reds.

It had always been Pall Mall Reds; a carton tucked into the back pocket of his jeans, tapped out and twirled over and over through his busy, fidgeting fingers. The white coat of arms, red cardboard feathering and battered around the edges.

The Langham’s kitchen and dining room have been torn down to the struts, reduced to sawdust and painstakingly rebuilt by an army of contractors and carpenters in hard hats. Adam catches wafts of cigarette smoke off them every so often, has to clamp down on the automatic urge -- the need for something between his teeth, nicotine leaching into his lungs.

They have set up camp stoves along the stretch of half-finished counter space. The deadline for reopening -- for the launch of  _ Adam Jones at the Langham _ \-- will be tight, and Adam is not going to waste a moment of preparation.

Everything has to be perfect.

He works elbow-to-elbow with Max among the ceaseless racket, plying the rotation of workmen with tastings of potato soup and summer squash. It mixes with the tang of freshly sawed wood and rubbery plastic tarps in a chaos of smells and sounds and perpetual moving parts -- Adam is sure that he has the recipe almost perfect, flags down the foreman.

“It was better yesterday.” Jody is apologetic and uncompromising in his criticism. 

Worse, Max agrees.

Spooning a portion of thick soup into one of their clean glasses, Adam decides he will have to go in search of more discerning opinions. “You seen Tony anywhere?”

“He’s gonna tell you the same thing,” Max warns without looking up from the sautee. 

“Fuck off.”

Jody jerks a thumb at the plastic tarp currently doing service as their kitchen door. “He’s round the back.”

The back alley means relative quiet, away from the thud of hammers and whining pneumatic drills. It has rained all afternoon and the air is still damp, everything cool and grey in the filtered sunlight. Adam leans halfway through their makeshift door, out into the stillness and the rainwater runoff from the gutters. 

“Hey --” A request. A demand for his presence in the stifling, plastic-wrapped humidity of the half-finished kitchen. 

It dies on his lips; killed instantly by the sight that greets him.

Tony Balerdi is a cool slash of navy blue propped against the Langham’s facade, like something out of a catalogue -- all long legs and perfectly tailored suit, the burning ember of a cigarette between his fingers. 

A silent spectator -- frozen -- Adam’s eyes follow the slender line of Tony’s throat when he tips his head back, sighs a grey stream of smoke into the mist. 

Oh. 

Adam’s heart gives a strange, hollow pang of  _ want _ against his ribs. A craving for nicotine, for a proper cigarette? Or --?

Strange, and so very attractive, the way Tony holds the dwindling cigarette between his fingers, letting it burn its way down to nothing; the way he wraps his lips around it every so often to take a slow, lazy drag. He closes his eyes and exhales a long, bone-weary sigh.

And Adam should walk away, but he is addicted -- to the thick nicotine smell, to this new vision of Tony Balerdi before him.  _ Smoking _ ? This is the same man who tried a single hit from a joint so many years ago in Paris and had coughed until his eyes were streaming. 

He manages a few steps down the loading ramp’s incline, his feet moving of their own accord, drawn closer as he says “hey, Tony.”

“Adam.” 

Like a guilty teenager, Tony snaps instantly to attention, throwing down the cigarette stub. Little Tony, so easy to fluster. He stares at Adam with wide eyes as he tries unsubtly to grind out the embers with the toe of his polished oxfords.

And, in turn, Adam’s eyes track glacial slow from the pulverized remains of the Pall Mall cigarette to the nervous crumple of Tony’s soft face.

“That’s new.” 

“It has been three years.” And the cigarettes may be new but the way he itches at the tip of his nose, eyes sliding sideways, is as familiar as breathing. “Things change.”

“They sure do.” 

Things change and people change and Adam has no idea what to do with himself now, with the serving cup in his hand and the smell of cigarette smoke between them and the way his whole body seems to lean into Tony --  _ yearning _ .

For what?

Tony’s bright brown eyes find the cup of cooling soup in Adam’s hand. “Is this --?”

A lifeline.

“Yeah.” Adam shakes himself. “Yeah -- I added more tarragon.”

“Oh.” With a visible effort Tony smooths his ruffled edges, banishing the flush from his cheeks as he plucks the proffered glass from Adam’s numb fingers. And Adam is still staring, watching with keen interest, as he rolls the soup over his tongue. Tony’s gaze finds his and darts shyly away again, uneasy. “Is good.”

“ _ Good _ ?” Useless. How many times have they had this discussion? Adam shifts his weight and folds his arms across his chest, exasperated. “Good means nothing.” 

But somehow, whether it is  _ good _ doesn’t matter quite as much as it had when he’d stepped out into the alley. The merits of more or less tarragon pale in comparison to this puzzling new facet of Tony Balerdi.

In spite of himself Adam asks “when did you start smoking?”

_ Why _ ?

A little shiver of fear seizes in Tony’s chest and he shrugs, looking everywhere but at Adam. It isn’t the cigarette smoke that tightens his lungs, smothering any attempt at a confession. “Is just a habit.”

The kind of habit that had started almost as an accident. A small, thoughtless thing when they had cleaned out the contents of Adam’s locker at the restaurant, slipping the crumpled, half-empty red carton into his own pocket. 

He had sat in the open window in his Paris flat in the small, blue hours of the night and let the cigarettes burn slowly to nothing between his fingers. A vague outline of Adam in that faint sense memory, disappearing in curls of smoke against the darkness.

Melodramatic, perhaps.  _ Pathetic _ , Tony had decided. And it had only been the weight of the cigarette smoke settling in his lungs, smelling so much like Adam, that had started to ease the ache.

Adam’s face is inscrutable, his blue eyes cool and steady, and Tony has to wonder how much of that history Adam can read in him now -- how much he understands. But Adam only jams his hands into his pockets, mimicking Tony’s shrug.

“Okay.” 

And then he is gone, ambling back into the ruckus of their incomplete kitchen space -- as though it is just as simple as that.

It feels endless and like the blink of an eye; all of a sudden the restaurant is refurbished, the kitchen gleaming with new chrome, and through all of it Tony can hardly think straight. How foolish of him to imagine that things would be better -- to expect that anything might actually be  _ easier _ with Adam no longer a spectre of memory but a man in flesh and blood. 

Worse, Adam is  _ good _ . Still as meticulous, as maddening and tyrannical as ever, but not quite so unhinged. There is a warmth to him now, golden and brilliant as sunshine, and Tony can never quite bring himself to look away. With Adam comes the bright flare of familiar heartache, struck like a match in the confines of his chest, and Tony smokes his way through the warning-sign-red carton in his desk drawer twice as fast.

He doesn’t even smoke them properly half the time -- just lets them burn.

Like lighting incense, he sets the sulphur-tip of the match to the cigarette between his teeth and offers up a silent plea with the smoke.  _ Please. _

The hum of nicotine, the lingering smoke on his tongue, does nothing for the churning of his stomach on the day of the relaunch. Just to have something to do with his hands, to calm the nerves that tremble their way to the surface, Tony chainsmokes half a pack of cigarettes between services.

_ Please, let it go right. _

Of course, the universe has other ideas.

Everything goes to hell.

“Where is he?”

Only the quiet hiss of oil popping in frying pans, the scrape of a spatula, even the clatter of pots and pans on counter tops and gas burners seems muted by the funereal pall that has settled over their kitchen. It had all been too good to be true.

_ Let it go right _ \-- now Tony offers up a smaller, selfish prayer.  _ Please don’t let him disappear again. _

“Outside throwing up.” Max’s hazel eyes are grim. 

Tony curses.

He finds Adam in the darkened alleyway, a low-lit silhouette hunched over on the wet concrete with his head in his hands. And this is the Adam Jones that Tony knows so well; the Adam he has always been afraid of and afraid for and who he has no idea how to help. 

“Adam.”

_ “Don’t.” _ A single, jagged syllable like breaking glass. “Just -- don’t. Okay?”

Tony slips his hands into the pockets of his trousers and nods, looking out into the layers of darkness. “Okay.”

Neither one of them knows quite what to say.

For the sake of something to do with his nervous hands, with the apologies and confessions that press behind his lips, Tony digs into the pocket of his suit coat for the carton of Pall Malls. It feels dangerous when Adam’s eyes slide up to meet his own, worse still to hold the package out to him and  _ offer _ . 

Adam shakes his head; stronger than he was six years ago, and yet still not nearly strong enough. He pushes himself to his feet, pale eyes shining wet and hungry in the darkness, watching as Tony fumbles with the matches.

“Here.”

Clever fingers steal the matchbook from Tony’s grip -- a brush of calloused fingertips against his palm -- and Adam strikes the match with an expert flick. He cradles the flame and Tony is hyper-aware of the breath he is holding, of the cherry-bright ember of the cigarette between them and Adam shaking out the match, the faint hiss when it lands in the rainwater puddles that have accumulated on the asphalt. 

They are only breaths apart. 

_ I’ve been sober two years, two weeks, and six days. _

Blue-white smoke curls from the end of the cigarette, slips through the seam of Tony’s lips; Adam is drawn like a magnet to the ghosts of nicotine, to the slender fingers and the wide mouth wrapped around the end of the cigarette.

“Adam…”

He is a million miles away, gouging fingernail crescents into his palms --  _ my name is Adam Jones, and I’m an addict _ \-- and Tony’s voice is gentle and somehow still enough to shatter him.

“Fuck.” 

Adam chokes on the sound, a cracked and devastated noise that squeezes in his throat when he screws his eyes shut, grasping fingers finding purchase in the neat lines of Tony’s lapels. The bulk of him folds over, folds inward as he shivers, pressing their foreheads together in a crush of sticky, sweaty skin.

He collapses into Tony, chasing the secondhand smoke -- the nicotine heavy in each fragile exhale -- searching for some small measure of relief. Afraid to do anything more than let the cigarette burn down between his own trembling fingers, unwilling to risk even the smallest shift to take another drag at the filter, it is all Tony can manage to keep them both upright.

“ _ Fuck _ .”

Tony’s awareness is reduced to the scratch of stubble, the humid warmth of Adam’s mouth so near his own -- the half-sobs and co-mingling breaths caught in the scant millimeters between them. Not a kiss. Not quite. But something terrible enough that Tony’s knees wobble and his heart gives a lurch behind his ribs.

And this is what Tony does -- he fixes things, solves the problems before they can  _ become _ problems -- but he has no idea how to fix this. He swallows down the sweet rush of nauseous fear that threatens to turn his stomach. 

“Adam?”

“I’m sorry.” Adam’s voice is thick, the words a broken-hearted rush of heat against Tony’s skin as the maitre d’s fingers trace a cautious path up and down the knobs of his vertebrae, feeling the sweat that soaks through the thin t-shirt. “Fuck -- I’m…”

Tony wants to say  _ I know _ and  _ I understand _ , and Adam expects  _ I told you so _ . In the end, though, there is nothing either of them can say. 

They are caught together in the spirals of cigarette smoke and the oil-slick darkness of the alleyway, and then Adam breathes in sharply and the line of his spine straightens, shoulders squared. There is a strange, manic shine to his eyes, the pad of his thumb tracing the soft curve of Tony’s cheek, and -- for a moment -- Tony thinks Adam might just kiss him after all.

“Call the TV people.” 

_ Wh…? _

Adam’s voice is strained; exhausted from the effort it takes to gather the shreds of himself back together. “Tell ‘em I’ll do all their shows. There’s not gonna be another empty table at this restaurant, Tones.” 

Tony sways.

The heavy hand on his shoulder is gone, the hinges of the Langham’s back door sigh. Dazed and dizzy, Tony sits down hard on the concrete step; it bites at the backs of his thighs through the thin tweed of his suit.

He might throw up.

The warning heat of the cigarette flares briefly, a burst of hot pain against his fingertips -- burned down to no more than a nub. Despairing, disgusted with himself, Tony flicks it away. How stupid can he be?

_ I gave up drinking along with, uh... sniffing, snorting, injecting, licking yellow frogs, and women. _

And Tony Balerdi can’t manage to do even that much. Psychotherapy. Cigarettes. He puts in longer hours at the restaurant, swipes listlessly at the online dating profiles, and no matter what he tries, he just can’t quit Adam Jones.

He tries to quit the cigarettes, though; the same process he had watched Adam spiral through so many times in Paris. Fewer cigarette breaks means popping more painkillers to manage the headaches, means sleeping poorly and snapping at his staff. Everything makes him irritable -- the scrape of silverware on plates, the questions and small catastrophes that interrupt him in the office.

His hands shake.

They are still shaking, for entirely different reasons, when he finds himself standing in the Langham’s penthouse suite. Adam is still damp from showering, his back to Tony when he sits on the edge of the bed, and Tony can’t manage to tear his eyes away from the rivulets that travel slowly down the nape of his neck.

“How many days?” 

Adam tosses the question nonchalantly over one shoulder, measuring Tony’s reaction while he pretends to focus on his shoelaces.

“What?”

“It’s a simple question, Tones.” Adam stands to face him across the bed, his eyes raking Tony up and down from the polish of his shoes to the flush rising on his cheeks. “How many days since your last smoke?”

“Five.” Dry-mouthed, wide-eyed. “How did you --?”

The anxiety. The anger. The way the smell of smoke has started to fade around the edges. The trembling hands that Tony folds together and squeezes until his knuckles are white when he stands military-perfect on the dining room’s periphery. Adam has seen all the signs, has lived them.

“One addict to another? It’s not that hard to spot, and --” A casual shrug does nothing to soften the laser focus of his keen blue eyes. “-- maybe I notice a lot more than you think I do.”

He lets that implication settle between them as he circles the unmade bed, aware of the way Tony swallows hard around confessions and questions and fears.  _ What has he noticed? How much does he know? _ Tony seems to shrink with every step Adam takes toward him, all dark eyes and uncertain mouth.

Adam says “tell me about the cigarettes.”

With Adam prowling the periphery of the suite, transcribing a slow circle around him, Tony is not sure what there is to say. Isn’t quite sure he can manage to say anything at all; the words are lodged at the back of his throat, tangled in an agonized breath.

“You never smoked in Paris.”

Tony twists his fingers together into knots. If he says nothing, if he doesn’t look at him, will Adam let the matter drop?

“Why?”

So many questions wrapped up in the single syllable. Why did he start? Why Pall Malls? Why then, and why now, and why  _ Adam _ ?

The confession, when it comes, is small -- wavering and hot with embarrassment. 

“You know why.”

With his arms folded, studying the line of Tony’s spine beneath his suit jacket, Adam grins upon hearing his suspicions confirmed. And try as he might to hide it, the smile finds its way into his voice. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,  right?”

“And sometimes…” Tony swallows hard, hating the heavy heat of tears gathering at the backs of his eyes. There is no need for him to finish the sentence.

“Yeah.”

Tony startles at the voice right beside his ear, shivering it’s way across his skin when Adam presses up behind him. There are firm hands -- strong, knobby fingers -- curled around his biceps, keeping Tony upright, holding him secure. And he is only toying with Tony, only teasing, but there is something about the warmth of him, the intentional way he fits himself into Tony’s space, that doesn’t seem like a joke at all.

“Still craving?”

Tony nods. 

_ Ceci n’est pas un pipe _ , he thinks wildly.  _ This is not a pipe, this is not cigarettes, this is…  _

Terrifying, when Adam traces a fingertip along the curve of his jaw to slip a finger beneath his chin. Exhilarating, when three days’ growth of stubble rasps against his cheek, when Adam guides him around in the cradle of his arms and his whole world is reduced to pale, brilliant blue.

“Does it -- does it get easier?” The yearning has settled itself deep in his marrow, there is no patch or hypnosis or behavioral therapy that can undo his addiction. Tony Balerdi is well beyond talking about the cigarettes; after all, they have never been his drug of choice.

“Sometimes.” Adam hums and the pad of his thumb, tracing the cupid’s bow of Tony’s lips, catches the hitch in his breath. “But it never really goes away.”

_ Paris _ , he thinks.  _ Jesus Christ, has it really been that long, Little Tony?  _

He has held on to that first day in the hotel suite, to the war of emotion that had played out across Tony’s vulnerable face. A sort of anguish, a doomed love and longing -- afraid of the temptation, like an alcoholic at an open bar.

Adam knows addiction and he knows himself and he knows that, in the end, he will be no good for Tony Balerdi. He offers him one last out with raised eyebrows and a soft voice. “You know, it’ll kill you if you aren’t careful.”

“I think --” Tony’s wide umber eyes track all-too-obviously down to Adam’s mouth and back again. It is only the gentle hands on his shoulders keeping him from flying apart, from crumbling to pieces on the hotel carpet. The admission burns in his throat like smoke. “Perhaps, it is already killing me.”

The smile that cracks across Adam’s face -- the fond huff of laughter -- is caught against Tony’s lips. “Nah,” Adam says with tender certainty. “Not anymore.”

There is no hint of nicotine this time, only the taste of Adam’s toothpaste and a hint of sweetened coffee. It is an entirely different kind of high, a new sort of desperate needing that takes the shape of eager mouths, of mussed hair and flushed faces and three softly spoken words. 


End file.
